Shop wisely when buying a new PC

TechTalk
By Ken Doyle

Over the past couple of months, I’ve advised a few clients on purchasing new PCs, and it occurred to me that the decision-making process is often harder than it should be. Faced with a bewildering array of choices and options, a prospective buyer who walks into a store or browses a website can quickly be overwhelmed. Another pitfall is the lure of bargain-basement PC offers. A sub-$500 PC can end up costing a lot more than that (in both cash and lost productivity) when you have to get it serviced every month or have faulty components replaced.

The key components to consider include:

Processor: This is the heart of your PC and plays a large part in determining overall performance. The other major component is the motherboard, but you typically don’t have a choice in that department when buying an off-the-shelf PC. If speed is critical to your work, avoid PCs that use the Intel Celeron or AMD Duron chips, as they sacrifice considerable performance in exchange for lower prices. PCs based on the AMD Athlon XP chip tend to cost less compared to equivalent Intel Pentium 4 processors. Laptop users may want to check out the combination of Intel Pentium M and Centrino chips, which offers improved battery life and wireless networking.

Memory: This is one case where more is definitely better. Windows XP is a demanding operating system, and it will run much smoother with 512 MB of memory. If you run a lot of programs, double that to 1 GB (1,024 MB). The “speed” of the memory is also a factor. New PCs typically require faster, DDR-RAM (PC3200 or PC2700), compared to the slower PC133 or PC100 SD-RAM found in older models.

Hard drive: Unless you do a lot of multimedia work, a hard drive capacity of 40 or 80 GB should be just fine. Try to get a drive that has a rotational speed of 7,200 rpm and a cache of at least 8 MB (which is typical for quality drives).

Optical drives: Most PCs come with a CD burner and the option of a second optical drive such as a DVD-ROM (which also reads CDs). If space is at a premium, such as in a laptop, you can get a combo drive (DVD-ROM and CD-rewritable). If CDs aren’t enough for archiving your files or you’d like to create DVDs of your home movies, consider a superdrive—a combination DVD and CD burner that also reads regular DVDs and CDs. Many newer DVD burners can use both DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW discs.

Audio and video: If you do graphic design or multimedia work, you’re much better off purchasing separate sound and video cards, rather than relying on the chips that are built into many motherboards. Gamers especially will want to max out their budget when it comes to these components.

There are other factors that will impact your purchasing decision, but they’re beyond the scope and space of this column. Of course, if you’re as picky as I am, you’ll settle for nothing less than building the PC yourself. It’s a good way to stay within budget. More importantly, it will give you the satisfaction of knowing that every component in your new PC--down to the screws that hold it together--will be exactly what you ordered.